Summary

A soap opera hooked Soledad as a distraction from her own story. After Soledad and Willems’s “violent sessions of lovemaking” (207), they would watch the show, which morphed into Soledad’s obsession; she scribbled down observations on all the characters, which overgrew into “unwieldy family trees overripe with exorbitant personality sketches” (209). Soon, the soap opera obsession extinguished Willems and Soledad’s sex life. Soledad and Willems discussed their relationship problems alone with separate therapists. In one session, Willems shared a dream in which he was forced to beat Soledad while Uxbal lingered behind him.

Back at the Encarnacións’ Cuban house, the elderly near-blind woman cooked for Ulises. She continued to call him Uxbal. Ulises asked Granma some questions about Isabel, whom he called “his daughter,” and she said a young woman had passed through and taken tomatoes with her. In the morning...